Remembering the Prophets

Today we lit the 2nd candle in the advent wreath to remember the prophets.

And today’s readings are concerned with two of the greatest of them: Isaiah in the Old Testament (Isaiah 11:1-10) and John the Baptist in the New (Matthew 3:1-12). Christians see their prophetic words as referring to the incarnation of God in Jesus, and the coming of Christ’s kingdom.

We shouldn’t see prophets, I think, as being like weather forecasters, or racing tipsters - people who merely foretell the future without engaging in it. Rather a prophet is someone who tells things how they are and expresses a vision for how things should be. This powerfully influences those who listen, so that they act to make that prophetic vision a reality. Prophets actually change history through their vision!

Let me try to tease out what these prophets’ words say to me.

Let’s start with Isaiah’s vision of a world of peace and justice.

‘The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.’

Such a beautiful image. But we all know, don’t we, that the strong prey on the weak; the natural world is all about survival of the fittest. ‘Nature, red in tooth and claw’ – the phrase comes from Tennyson's long poem ‘In Memoriam’ (canto 56). In it the poet contrasts the idea of a good and loving God with the terrors of an uncaring Nature. He talks about a person of faith,

Who trusted God was love indeed

And love Creation's final law-

Tho’ Nature, red in tooth and claw

With ravine, shriek'd against his creed

Surely Isaiah’s vision of predator and prey at peace together can be nothing more than a fairytale? That’s not the way the world works. What’s going on here?

The context is important, I think.

Isaiah is writing in Jerusalem, the capital of Judah, at a time of great danger. The Assyrians have just conquered Judah’s twin kingdom of Israel and carried the people off as captives, and now they threaten Judah. Isaiah believes that the social and political collapse of Israel was caused by its failure to live up to the spirit of the law given in Sinai – and he sees the same thing happening to Judah. Isaiah has just prophesied that Judah too will be overthrown, but he can’t believe that God will desert his chosen people completely – once the Assyrians have purged those who have broken the covenant, surely a faithful remnant will be left.

So in today’s reading Isaiah prophesies that from the root of Jesse, the ancestor of Judah’s kings, a new shoot will rise up. From the ruins of Jerusalem, from the ruins of the kingdom of Jesse’s son David, a new kingdom will arise. It will be a kingdom of justice and peace, worthy of God’s favour. It will be marked by ‘the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and fear of the Lord’. Its ruler – from the stock of Jesse – ‘with righteousness … shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth’.

It is a vision of the kingdom of heaven. In such a society the powerful will not prey on the weak. Isaiah’s vision is about people, not nature. Survival of the fittest should not – must not - apply in human society, even if it does in nature.

Isaiah was wrong in his belief that Judah would fall to the Assyrians.

The Assyrians mysteriously abandoned their attack. When destruction came, 100 years later, it was the Babylonians, not the Assyrians who laid waste to Jerusalem and carried its leaders into exile.

But Isaiah’s vision was not forgotten. His words were remembered by the exiles. His vision inspired them to hold firm in their traditional faith, to keep their identity as a people, and to return home when conditions allowed.

Over the centuries that followed, Isaiah’s words were studied and elaborated. By the time of Jesus, religious Jews felt quite certain that God would send his Messiah – his anointed one – of the stock of Jesse, who would rule over the Jewish people, as Isaiah had prophesied, with righteousness and faithfulness.

John the Baptist believed in Isaiah’s prophecy and expected God to send his Messiah.

As Matthew reports, he told his followers ‘one who is more powerful than I is coming after me, I am not worthy to carry his sandals’. Matthew also believed that John himself was the messenger that Isaiah said would announce the Messiah, ‘the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight”. John called the people to, ‘Repent,’ – that is, to make a new start, to change their lives – ‘for the kingdom of heaven is at hand’ – the kingdom of Isaiah’s vision.

Jesus surely pondered Isaiah’s words too. I believe he realised that they were to be fulfilled in him. But God gave Jesus the insight that he must come as the Messiah, not in physical power and glory like a secular king, but as a suffering servant to lead his people – all people, Jews and gentiles alike – by his example, to the kingdom of heaven which his loving father God willed.

The early Christians, steeped in the Jewish Messiah tradition, were convinced that Jesus is the shoot from the stock of Jesse in Isaiah’s prophesy. The spirit of the Lord rested upon him. He preached the kingdom of heaven. He died that we might be saved, he rose from the dead, and he ascended to God. Surely, they said, he will return to rule with righteousness and faithfulness over God’s kingdom of justice and peace.

So what of us today? Can we believe in Isaiah’s vision?

In our own time, as in Isaiah’s, we are faced with danger and uncertainty. The prophets of today are the climate scientists and ecologists. They not only proclaim the consequences of not caring for this beautiful planet as we should, but they also show us a path forward to a sustainable future in which all creatures may flourish, including ourselves.

We must never give up hope. We must hold on to Isaiah’s vision – the world can be like the kingdom of heaven, filled with justice and peace. John’s call echoes in our ears, to make a new start because the kingdom of heaven has come near. Jesus has shown us the way as God incarnate. He has sent the Holy Spirit to lead us, and fire to drive us forward, just as John said he would. Our calling as Christians is to do our bit to make his kingdom, the kingdom of heaven, a reality.

God is faithful to his faithful people.

‘They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.’

Isaiah’s vision is not a fairytale – it is a vision of the kingdom that God wants for us all. And Jesus has shown us how to make it a reality.

I shall finish with a Collect of the Word:

God of all peoples,
whose servant John came baptising
and calling for repentance:
help us to hear his voice of judgement,
that we may also rejoice in the word of promise,
and be found pure and blameless in that glorious Day
when Christ comes to rule the earth as Prince of Peace;
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen

Choosing your team

An address given at Shinrone and Aghancon on Epiphany 3, 25th January 2009.

You can hardly have missed all the fuss surrounding Barack Obama’s inauguration as 44th President of the United States!

We certainly didn’t in my house: my wife Marty is a dual Irish-US citizen and actually voted for him, so immediately after his inauguration speech we toasted him with a glass of champagne!

Perhaps you too have a special interest in him – while Moneygall have claimed him as a native son, I’ve heard rumours that his earliest traceable Irish ancestor really came from Shinrone!

There is such an outpouring of emotion about Obama, not just in the United States but right around the world. I find it both heart-stirring and also a bit scary. He has great charisma. His words speak to American hopes for an end to division and a return to peace and prosperity. They speak to all of us, I think. But I fear too many see him as a Messiah who can deliver the change they voted for in the twinkling of an eye. How can he possibly live up to their expectations? And how will they react if he doesn’t?

When a leader takes on a great mission, two of the many things he or she must do are these:

First, to find words clear and simple enough to inspire people to achieve his mission – in horrid business jargon, that’s a vision statement.

Second, to choose the team that is needed to implement the vision.

This is what President Obama has been doing over the last few weeks of transition. His inauguration speech is in effect his vision statement. Very wisely he has tried to use it to manage the expectations of the American people. And he has been choosing the team who will make up his Government and implement his vision.

And surely this is just what Jesus did as well, at the very start of his ministry, as Mark tells us in today’s Gospel reading (Mark 1:14-20).

As Mark tells it, Jesus first went to be baptised by John the Baptist in the Jordan - perhaps that is when he got the first inkling of his own significance. Driven by the spirit, he then spent 40 days being tempted by the devil in the Judean desert – perhaps this is where he refined the vision that would define his mission. Only when he learned that John the Baptist had been arrested did he actually start his ministry in Galilee. Only then was the time right for the kingdom of God to come near.

Today I’m going to reflect both on Jesus’s vision statement, and how he chose his team, because I think there’s a lot we can learn from them.

Mark summarises Jesus’s vision statement, in these few words: ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’

Mark has so compressed Jesus’s vision that I find it is not easy to grasp the meaning straight away. Let me try to unpick it.

Jesus sees that the time is right for his great mission, which is to lead every one of us into the kingdom of God. In other words his mission is to show us all how to be the men and women that God wants us to be. It is in fact no less than the salvation of humanity.

What prevents us from being the people God wants us to be? We are all created in God’s image, and in our heart of hearts we can all tell right from wrong, can't we? – in other words we are souls with consciences. But we all know only too well - it is a matter of observation, if we are honest with ourselves - that nevertheless we repeatedly do what we should not do and do not do what we should do. In other words we all sin; some more and some less, but we all sin. And that sin cuts us off from God’s kingdom.

Jesus teaches us that God loves us, every one of us, as a father loves his children. More than that Jesus teaches us that God like a loving father will forgive us our sins and give us entry to his kingdom. All we have to do is to acknowledge them and repent - of course we must really mean it, we must truly repent. This is the good news that Jesus proclaims and asks us to believe.

‘Repent, and believe in the good news’ sums up Jesus’s vision for every one of us.

Mark also tells us how Jesus chose his first followers, Simon and his brother Andrew, and James and John the sons of Zebedee.

The other three Gospels have similar stories, and no doubt Jesus called the rest of the Twelve who he would send out as apostles in much the same way.

Let us think a bit about the men that Jesus picked out to be his very first followers. Here are some things I notice about them.

First, notice who they are: they are ordinary folk, working fishermen. Like Jesus himself, they aren’t part of the Jewish elite; they are neither learned nor wealthy. They are part of that honourable class the common people. Abraham Lincoln once said, ‘God must love the common people – he made so many of them.’ Jesus clearly did.

Notice what they are doing when Jesus calls them: they are just going about their ordinary day’s work, catching fish and mending nets. If we are alive to God’s world and listening for him, his call may come to any one of us, at any time, in any place.

Notice how Jesus calls them: he simply says, ‘Follow me!’ I don’t imagine this is the first time they have seen Jesus. No doubt they had stood in the crowd and listened to him. Perhaps they had lingered afterwards and talked to him in person. Whatever, they must already have been captured by his charisma – if Obama has charisma now, then I think Jesus must have had it in spades! Their response I feel sure is an emotional one, not an intellectual one. It is love that draws them to the person of Jesus, not his arguments, just as love has drawn so many to him ever since.

Lastly, notice what Jesus offers them: a task to do. He calls them not to a life of contemplation, but to a life of service to others, as ‘fishers of men’, in that lovely phrase from the King James translation. It is a task in which they will spend themselves, burn themselves up, and in the end die for his sake, and for the sake of others. It is also a task in which they will find eternal life in God’s kingdom.

So to conclude, among the things we can learn from Jesus’s vision statement and his choice of disciples are these:

• We should listen well to Jesus’s words, ‘Repent, and believe in the good news’, because they sum up his vision for us.
• And we should try to model ourselves on Jesus’s first disciples. They are ordinary people, just as we are. Like them we should stay alert and open for Jesus’s call. It may come anywhere, at anytime. It is a call to love, to love him and to follow him in his life of service to others. It is a call to enter the kingdom of God.

Shepherds glorifying God

An address given on Sunday 28th December 2008 at Shinrone

“Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing which has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us”.

So say the shepherds who were keeping watch over the flock in fields close to the town, as St Luke tells us in the Gospel reading (Luke 2:15-21).

Luke’s is the only Gospel to tell us about the shepherds who visited Mary and Joseph and their new-born son Jesus. His beautiful story, so familiar to us, still resonates today. So let’s try to imagine ourselves in the shoes of the shepherds that night 2000 years ago.

Some of you I’m sure know much more than I do about sheep. Perhaps you’ve kept and tended them. But I doubt if any of you would call yourselves shepherds. Shepherds are few and far between in Ireland these days, but they would have been very familiar to Luke’s readers. The rugged Judean uplands were a pastoral country. Flocks of sheep represented wealth. A shepherd was paid to stay out night and day in all weathers to guard the sheep against wild animals and robbers. It was a hard, dangerous job, but very responsible. Jesus likens himself to the Good Shepherd, who would lay down his life for the sheep.

Luke’s shepherds are ordinary people, much like you and me. They are not self-important rulers or highly educated opinion formers, as Herod and the Wise Men were, in Matthew’s alternative Christmas story. Luke chooses to tell us about how ordinary people responded to the miracle of Christmas, not the great and mighty. And I believe we have much to learn from them.

The shepherds had just experienced a miraculous vision, a vision of angels.

‘The glory of the Lord shone around them’ – I imagine shimmering light, like the Aurora, the Northern lights. An angel announces ‘to you is born this day in the city of David’ – that is Bethlehem – ‘a Saviour, who is the Messiah, the Lord.’ They are given a sign; they ‘will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger’. Then the angel is joined by ‘a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favours”’

Wow! What an experience! What an exhilarating joy the shepherds must have felt!

Have you ever heard the heavenly host? I have, I think, and you may have too. I can remember my joy and exhilaration after the births of my children. I can remember literally dancing down the wet deserted streets of Guildford at 4am in mid December, on the way back home from the hospital. It was as if the whole universe was laughing and crying and singing with me. And I shared my joy with everyone I met over the following days. Angel voices – a memory to treasure!

Surely it is an experience of this same kind that Isaiah speaks of in today’s OT reading (Isaiah 61:10-62:3), when he says:

I will greatly rejoice in the Lord,
my whole being shall exult in my God;
for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation,
he has covered me with the robe of righteousness,
as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland,
and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.

Most if not all of us, ordinary people, experience once in a while that sudden sense of exhilarating joy, as both Isaiah and the shepherds did. It is not just poets and the mad who experience visions of angels. We should not be afraid of them, I think. Rather we should see it as God granting us a glimpse, just a fleeting glimpse, of his loving power and majesty. We should treasure such experiences when we return to the world of normality, and ponder them in our hearts, as Mary did.

The shepherds ‘went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in a manger’.

These shepherds are straight-forward, practical people. They don’t stand around debating and philosophising about what their extraordinary experience means. They go with haste to look with their own eyes. And what they find confirms their experience – it is just as the angel had told them. This little child is special, very special - a Saviour, a Messiah, the Lord. And they can’t stop talking about it! Just as I couldn’t stop telling everyone about the birth of my children.

The real miracle of Christmas is that through his grace our loving-Father God makes the first move towards us, to you and to me, to all human beings. He reveals himself to us as Mary and Joseph’s beautiful, helpless baby, their first-born son. This baby grows up to be our Lord Jesus Christ – in John’s mystic vision, the Word of God, the true light that enlightens everyone – through whose life and teaching, and death and resurrection, we are shown the way to God. This is what St Paul is telling us in today’s Epistle reading (Galatians 4:4-7).

But God’s grace is of no use to us unless we respond to it. We should learn from the shepherds how to respond to the miracle of Christmas. They went with haste to find Jesus, and we must too. Like them, we will not be disappointed.

‘The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen.’

They don’t hang about. Once they have seen the child Jesus lying in the manger – the Saviour, the Messiah, the Lord – and once they have told their story - they just go back to work, to tend their flocks.

But something has changed - they are changed. They go back ‘glorifying and praising God for all that they had heard and seen.’

And this surely is what we must do too. We are not meant to remain for ever in our visions, no matter how exhilarating they may be. We must come back to earth. Our job is to bring our experience of the love of God back into the everyday world. Let us pray that we too may go about the world as changed people, glorifying and praising God for all we have heard and seen.

So to summarise, we have indeed a great deal to learn from Luke’s shepherds:

• We should treasure the glimpses we are granted of the love and majesty of our loving Father God.
• We should go with haste to find God’s grace in the Christmas miracle of the birth of Jesus.
• And we should return glorifying and praising God as changed people, to bring God’s loving Spirit back with us into the world.